Serendipity is statistically overrated
by Alexis Pride
Summary: The Zone is home to some of the strangest people...
1. Forever lost

Author's note: This just kinda came to me one day while I was playing Call of Pripyat. Meant as a oneshot when I started writing, but if people like it, might as well give it more depth. Totally up to you, the readers - however that means leaving reviews *sly grin*

DISCLAIMER: I do not own the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series. I do, however, own Magnus Fryd and Nadja  
EDIT: Since it's now a story in progress, it seemed fitting to give each chapter a name.

* * *

**Chapter I**

**1x01-Pilot**

A shrill grating sound, followed by a freezing wind, as the rusty, age-old gates of Yanov train station opened. The din inside, laughter and the occasional plucking of guitar strings, all present but a moment ago, now lay silent, replaced by a low murmur - all eyes were on the one who walked in.

By any standards he was a bear of a man, tall and massive, a machine-made-god, all the more imposing in the midnight blue exoskeleton suit he wore and the heavily modified Heckler&Koch assault rifle slung over one shoulder. And behind him, hidden from the view of most and easily dismissed as a mere shadow, stood a small figure, a ragamuffin obscured in a tattered assortment of military canvas and shreds of fatigues, sewn into a kind of raincoat. They certainly were an odd pair, odd as they get in the Zone.

The armoured one removed his gasmask, revealing first a neatly trimmed goatee, then an aging, weatherbeaten face ridden with scars and fresh cuts. His blue eyes were emotionless, scanning the assembled stalkers while he fished through his vest's pockets and procured a pair of apparently ancient corrective spectacles with round, slightly bent frames. Having put on the glasses, he strode past the whispering and angry glares to the far end of the main hall, up to where the booking office had once been, his diminutive companion matching his long steps with a cheery skipping pace, much like that of a child's.

Hawaiian, snug in his little shop he set up in the ticket booth, was painfully aware of what, or rather, who, was coming his way - the arrival of these two usually signalled the onset of a shitstorm of trouble. On the other hand, they were well-paying customers, remarkably well-to-do compared to the average human denizen of Chernobyl, and they dragged in some of the craziest stuff ever... So the young shopkeep, dreaming of untold riches and bizarre artefacts, shrugged off the dread instilled by the armoured goliath's presence, and put on his trademark goofy grin before saluting the man in broken english slang:

"Yo sup, Magnus bro! You got anything good for me today?"

Magnus Fryd, A.K.A. "The surgeon"; a cold and calculating mind combined with a steady hand and an unsmotherable will to kill. Said to have incapacitated many a man with his superior marksman skills only to have a go at them later, with a hunting knife - all that is ever left to tell the tale is a wake of bodies marked by a cold-steel instrument with a serrated edge. The Zone, however, does not judge.

Strangely enough, not much was really known about the man at the time, and even so the little history he had was fading fast into myth. He was an enigma, a phantom, coming and going as the change of seasons, bearing the markings of Duty, though never truly claiming allegiance. Quite on the contrary, the soldiers of Duty stood well clear of The surgeon - to stray in his shadow was to invite death.

"I brought you a little souvenir from up North," - said Magnus in a heavy german accent, rummaging through his backpack. Hawaiian marveled at the artefact the man pulled out a moment later.

As the two plunged into a bartering debate, the ragdoll kept dancing around Magnus happily, oblivious to everything but an invisible tune.

Hawaiian raised an eyebrow - "Ah, so you still keep *that* with you, do you?" - absentmindedly picking up a candy bar - truly a luxury item this far into the Zone - and offering it to the small passenger. Pale, cherubic fingers enclosed upon the sweet morsel, carrying it up to the mouth, hidden somewhere beneath folds of fabric. Then the makeshift hood fell down and full, red lips curled into the cutest smile in the world, warming the shopkeep's heart - a girl in her mid-teens, no more than 16 years old, with shoulder-length flaxen hair, a snub nose and a wondrous pair of eyes, one stark yellow, the other a soothing green, both staring mirthfully up at Hawaiian.

Unlike Magnus', whose were clouded over with murderous intent: "Her name is Nadja. Make me repeat it just one more time and I swear I'll come in there and break your fingers."

ΩΩΩ

Yes, many people come to the Zone looking for solace and perhaps even a place to belong. Like them, Magnus Fryd, a sociopath of questionable morals, ran from reality in search of a home. He found it in the form of a teenage girl. Nadja, he called her, a mute child of the irradiated wastes, his redemption, his absolution.

But I am getting ahead of myself, for that is another story altogether.


	2. Am I One?

First of all, thanks to the three readers who've been kind enough to drop a quick hello - if it wasn't for you guys, this second installment wouldn't have seen the light of day.

I've had this on my computer for quite some time now, but I've spent a great deal more trying to tweak it, to pass onto it at least the slightest amount of legibility. It is a quick account of Magnus' stream of thoughts, sorta his point-of-view from a third person retelling. Again, nothing much actually happening in this chapter - a great big nothing with lots of words in it, one could even say. Still, I hope you enjoy it.

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**Chapter II**

**Am I one?**

Sleepless nights were Magnus' constant companion. On the off chance sleep did take him, it was ghastly, nightmarish. The Zone showed him things he did not wish to see, took him to places the names of which alone would drive a normal man insane. No, Magnus did not miss sleep in the very least.

Instead, he sat by the fire, looking into the flames, brooding about past mistakes. Only from time to time would he stir from his thoughts, goaded out by the slightest movements in the edge of darkness from across the embers - Nadja, curled up in her blankets like a young puppy, wandering through whatever fantastic dreamscapes her mind could conjure up.

Magnus studied the content smile on her half-open mouth, the slight dribble on the underside of her chin. The light from the fire was alive on her round, marble cheeks. _No freckles_, Magnus thought and a smile, ever so subtle, appeared on his otherwise stone face.

She was a mystery to him, this girl. If she even was a girl. Could he even be sure that she was at all human?

He watched her sleep.

Despite her appearance and youthful exuberance, there was something behind those closed eyelids of hers, something alien in its antiquity. He could feel its presence now and again - it was primordial in essence, like stardust, old as the universe yet reborn through each passing moment - and it was enough to give him the shivers. Much like the Zone itself, Nadja gave off that certain air of pitiless, primal grandeur, that left him feeling small and insignificant. She found herself out of place and out of time, yet it felt as though he were the one intruding, along with the rest of the world.

Coughing, Magnus reached for his backpack, pawing a small leather pouch, and proceeded to untie it. His calloused fingers stopped moving over the tight knot binding it when he heard Nadja mutter something - it was a rare occasion indeed, to hear her voice. Then the girl turned over in her blankets and reluctantly he directed his attention back at the troublesome tangle of strings in his hands.

A minute passed, perhaps two, the fire crackling cheerfully. The pouch was open, lying at Magnus' feet, the honeyed scent of tobacco wafting from its contents. Magnus was staring up at the sky; nothing but clouds up ahead, and beyond that, even more clouds. And beyond that, who knows? He wondered when the last time he had seen the stars was. Sadly autumns here in the Zone were always like this: grim, grey, and fickle - each moment was a blessing in itself when it was not raining cats and dogs.

_Rain. _Yet another thing he hated, he thought, as he brought the crumpled cigarette he had just rolled, up to his lips. He inhaled. Rain was bad for business - it dulled his senses, it erased tracks. Again and again it washed away the memories, spun like fine spidersilk webs through the hunting grounds around Pripyat, and weaved into the slowly-decaying concrete walls of the city. The rain washed away everything, thus resetting all the playing pieces to a neverending game of chess that had but one outcome. Death.

Exhaling, he blew rings of smoke. The little grey halos danced and lingered in the dead of night for a while, whisked away into the black nothingness above. Magnus lowered himself into a half-lying position, enjoying the silence - all that was missing was a bottle of Laphroaig to fortify the soul on its escape from reality.

Assuming that his life thus far was indeed real.

For the more he looked back on it, the more it seemed like a dream, unclear at its core meaning, suspiciously out-of-focus at the edges. Was he really the same young man who, all those years ago, had bedazzled with his intellect, graduating from the Federal Armed Force University in Munich at the top of his class, who had always dreamt of fulfilment and success?

To his own horror and astonishment, he could not say with certainty. The more he mulled over them, the more he realised the memories were not his. The faces of his parents, closest friends, even his late wife and child, blurred and faded into the likeness of old sepia photographs. It was all a lie, a blackness he desperately needed to penetrate, leave behind him once and for all. Yet try as he might, he could not outrun it. Even now it haunted him still, drowning his mind in a sea of red, forcing him into bloody submission.

_Red... blood red... oh God here it comes again!_ His heart started to beat faster, his breathing became more shallow. For a single moment he lost consciousness - when vision was restored, Magnus found himself pressing to his left temple the ever so familiar barrel of a 9mm sidearm. The touch of the HK USP was unbelievably calming, though. His thoughts swirled in turmoil for but a second more, dissolving into the clarity of a single question.

Magnus focused on this question, a voice in his head repeating the same question that had plagued every one of his sleepless nights for as long as he could remember: _"Why not simply end it all?"_

"Indeed, why not?" - he answered out loud, voice strained and gasping as though he had run for miles - "I could end it right here, right now."

_"Do it. Embrace oblivion." _He could feel his trigger finger tighten on the sidearm, his hand trembling slightly. Salvation, only a pull of a trigger away; death would be near instantaneous and painless, the force of a bullet shot at point blank tearing through the skull and exploding into the brain, shredding the grey matter caught in its path and thus extinguishing all further thought. It appealed to him - the coward's way out. And yet for all his running, Magnus did not consider himself a coward. Besides, there was now another he had to take care of.

"Oblivion, an eternity of nothingness... it does beckon, but I'm sure that eternity can wait for another day." A defiant grin crept onto Magnus' countenance, strength returning to his voice, the sheer willpower of the words blocking out the inner daemon's murderous insinuations - "My life has been given meaning." Nearby, Nadja roused, only to curl back up into the pile of blankets. Magnus walked over and knelt beside her, holding a hand softly to her cheek careful not to wake her, softly whispering: "It's all for you, little one, it's all for you. Before I sleep the sleep eternal, I shall give you the world."

The red haze within subsided completely and it was as though a great burden had been lifted off his chest. No matter how many times he experienced it, the feeling was still as amazing as ever - once more he had cheated death. _All thanks to you, _he regarded Nadja with gratitude. _All thanks to you._

ΩΩΩ

Morning had slowly crept upon the two, the crisp air foretelling a shift in the weather, as well as a much dreaded change of seasons. "Pack your belongings, Nadja, we've a long, beautiful day ahead of us – a clear sky across the vast horizon!"

Winter was coming.


	3. Suspiria

This "episode" should have aired back in winter, as a NewYear's special. Instead it shows up half a year later, in summer's full bloom... well, it's funny how things work out eh? *dodges any sharp thrown objects*

A slight warning: I may, or may not, have been under the effect of several psychotropic substances during the time I was writing this jumble of words, so it may, or may not, make even less sense than my usual stuff. I'm just saying.

PS: the Monolith is NOT a lie. I've seen it with mine own eyes!

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**Chapter III **

**Suspiria**

An eerie calm had fallen upon the Zone along with the blanket of snow that covered the vast killing grounds.

Time seemed to slow down in winter. The wildlife took to sleep and even the humans appeared more sluggish and cumbersome as they crossed the grey wastes. Thick mists of vesicants swirled through valleys and depressions. The creeks and marshes stood silent, their waters, choked with toxic sludge, frozen.

As it sat, unmoving, on a hillock overlooking Zaton, sharp winds and firn pelting its scarcely covered skin, it listened to the call of nature; the _beast_ did not mind the biting cold, nor did the bleak existence of this dreary place faze it. For through its eyes, the world took on shapes undreamed of and unthinkable. It perceived light through all wavelengths and spectra separately and simultaneously, seeing both life and death, as well as the thin line between, in an explosion of colour. Concentrating for a short while, it could feel the faintest tremor permeating the ground – the slight trickle of a melting icicle somewhere deep underground, the weight of an ancient oak, far up to the north, cracking under the snow – from miles across.

Scattered on the four winds were the heartbeats of every living creature around; if one would stop to listen, he would hear them, beating in unison a steady rhythm to the song of the Zone, some times barely audible, other times a maddening cacophony of noises. Such a sensory overload would most likely spell the death of any mortal willing to heed the chaos, but the _beast_ was different. It revelled in this, the music of creation, humming softly to the eldritch undertones of the magnum opus, body swaying in turn.

It was alive. It breathed and the Zone breathed with it, reverberating along its spine, through its every nerve fibre. Freedom beckoned.

It closed its eyes and inhaled once more. The steely cables of muscle in its legs tightened and then released. A blink of an eye later it was already hurtling down the incline of the hill with blinding speed, its feet barely ever touching the surface beneath. A moment later it disappeared into the poisonous fog. Cutting through the dense, chill air, undaunted by the toxicity, it moved effortlessly in long bounds, barely leaving any trace, or imprint on the freshly fallen snow, dodging and leaping through a field of gravity-distorting anomalies with taught precision and almost alien grace.

Having evaded the last gravity well, it sprinted due south, past the reeds and bogs iced over, past ships and boats - old, skeletal remains of ironclad sea monsters stranded on solid ground, left to the rust of time and those few humans who chose to eke out a meagre existence aboard – in absolute silence. On the great icebreaker, Skadovsk, a somber stalker stuck with watch duty was sucking on an unlit Belomorkanal cigarette, shivering in the cold and muttering to himself about the unfairness of the situation.

Unnoticed, the _beast_ sped on, not looking back at the swamp. The soil became drier with each leap and soon the swamp opened up into fields and pastures. Its senses were afire in the multitude of hues encompassing it; a lush, dark green smeared with ochre came from the left, a patch of fir trees still persevering in the harsh environment. From beneath came the ever constant diamond dazzle of UV bouncing off the snow. Above, the scorching azure of the sky, bathed in the purest white of a sun high upon the winter meridian. And ever so often, this riot of colour would become distorted, threaded like fine fabric with neon-black lines of radioactive decay, as the _beast_ trod on severely ionized earth, unaffected. In the distance, a dark jewel loomed closer and closer; the CNPP complex, one of humanity's greatest failures, an irremovable stain on history. The power plant's grim walls broke the skyline in testament of what had transpired long ago, a symbol of man's unending vanity and insatiable thirst for control. The corroding jungle of concrete and steel, however, was not without power – nearly 40 years after the First incident, it still acted like a crucible for the untamed energies pervading the Zone.

It was there that the melody led the _beast_, to the place of its monstrous birth.

Like broken teeth the edifice's many sections rose from the bitter earth, casting their shadow; quietly, with a predator's soundless step it slipped into its welcoming embrace, climbing crumbling walls and jumping over fissures – no obstacle was too steep, too wide, too dangerous, for the final destination was now in sight.

Reactor 4, where it all began. Where it all one day must end.

With a leap physically impossible the _beast_ cleared the freefall to the spire, crashing through the roof of the reactor and landing in its rotten bowels. Radiation's neon-black was incredibly dense here, choking out most everything else. Shaking off the debris of the fall the _beast_ sneezed away the dust motes floating on the stale air; to its left, in the centre of the massive hall, an octahedron stood, defiant, its features unreflective as though it were drawing in the very light around it, its edges so sharp they cut reality's grasp. This Monolith, as the human creatures came to know it, this immensely supercritical mass of nothingness, was older than the world itself, perhaps older even than the whole universe. Moving through time, yet not affected by it. It had always been present in this bubble of space and at the same time, it never truly was; such was its purpose of meaning, unchanging in the smallest quanta, yet pure chaos in its absolute. To the humans, an object of adoration and divine reverence at a certain point. A lie. If only they knew how foolish they had been, how uncaring the alien cube was – they had been praying to the embodiment of entropy, to salvation through undoing. The Monolith was anathema to creation.

And yet it felt like home. The _beast_stood up on its hind legs, stepping closer to the Monolith, basking in the radiance of anti-matter. Home. Perched atop this enclosed piece of defined existence, in the dust and twilight, it could reach out for the world. Past the Zone's borders, past Ukraine, its claws creeping further out east over the Caucasian range, over the Urals and into the Russian taiga; over the Atlantic in the west, reaching the far coasts of the Americas and stretching further still... ever further...

ΩΩΩ

"Come on, time to go little one!" The vision of viral world domination passed as soon as it had begun. The _beast_ turned in the direction of the voice; a virile human with greying hair and goatee, not ten feet away, was adjusting his glasses, grumbling in German. "Nadja, are you even listening? Honestly, sometimes I get the feeling like you're a million miles away."

It put on a smile for the human as it took to his side. The images it beheld moments ago were already a fleeting memory, dismissed by a single thought: _The time is not yet right for the world to see... but soon, very soon._


End file.
